


The Return

by IttyBittyTeapot (LittleSeedofDarkness)



Series: As Time Stood Still [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ereri canonverse Weekend 2017, Fluff, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Post-Canon, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 14:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10538460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSeedofDarkness/pseuds/IttyBittyTeapot
Summary: Though at one time the ocean meant something to Eren, it's never been anything special to Levi until now.Written for Ereri Canonverse Weekend 2017, Day 3: The Ocean





	

**Author's Note:**

> This can stand alone, but I think you'll lose some of the impact of certain things if you at the very least don't read part two of this series first.

Levi woke Eren for this occasion at the first light of dawn, which is surprising considering this place was never anything particularly special for him. Not like it was at one time for Eren. They’ve brought someone else with them as well, and Eren’s unsure if that was a good idea or not. It isn't what it used to be here, the beautiful dream that became a reality, one that was joyful, was then tarnished and violated with war and calamity and death.

As he scans the scene outside the window, Eren sees the hulls of ships, broken and battered, fragments standing out of the water like headstones, some portions obscured by waves or the tide, only to be revealed again as it ebbs away. He recollects destroying some of those that he looks upon now, with his Titan body roaring up into the sky as they invaded the island before he crushed them to pieces. This place is full of terribleness, but also filled with hope and triumph, and that’s why Eren didn't argue when Levi suggested they bring _her_ , as well.

The small raven-haired girl that Eren looks fondly down at as she slams full speed into his leg, and wraps her arms around it. Then piercing gray eyes much like Levi’s are looking up at him. So much like his that if Eren didn’t know different, he would swear she could be his biological child. “Daddy, Papa said it’s cold for swimming.”

There’s an adorable pout that Eren finds difficult to refuse in most cases, but this time, Levi is correct. “It is, but you can put your feet in, Lucia.”

“It might be poison.” Levi’s bad joke draws Eren’s attention when he enters the room, and Eren bends down, gently claps his hands over the toddler’s ears and stares at him.

“Don't say that! You’ll scare her, and you know it’s not true, Levi.”

But Lucia is already pulling at Eren’s hands, telling Levi it isn't poison, telling Eren she’s not afraid, then trotting off to run in circles across the room. It’s something, years ago, Eren would have expected Levi to find bothersome, but it’s clear he doesn't as Eren observes him sipping his morning tea, a small smile playing on his lips as he watches their daughter fly, carefree through the room.

A child they stumbled upon in the last days of the war, abandoned, nearly newborn and screaming in the corner of a bombed out building. They discovered her as the first rays of the sun touched the ground, and it’s why they named her, Lucia. Not only that, but she became a light for all of them in the darkest of days.

Levi had wrapped the screaming infant in his cloak, nearly two years earlier to the day, he and Eren returning with her to the camp, safely behind the front lines. First, there had been confusion, none of them quite knowing how to care for a baby, but somehow Eren and Levi had become her guardians.

The first night, after Levi was blessedly able to acquire milk and a bottle, it was Eren who first fed her until she cried, then handed her off to the nearest person in his nervousness, who was Levi. Though tired after hours of searching for what she needed, Eren could see him warm when he pressed her gently into his arms. Later when the group retired to bed, they took her to their tent, Levi cutting up a clean sheet he had swiped from supplies and fashioning them into diapers. And it was Eren who fed her when she woke during the night, trying his hardest to keep the fussing baby between them from waking Levi.

They made a rotation for the daytime between all of the Special Operations members, but when they would return in the evening, it was always Levi and Eren who would take over her care. And when they arrived home to HQ two weeks later, and the orphanages were full, supplies and food scarce, without thought or debate, her home became their room.

Of course, others had attempted to share the burden. Mikasa had offered to give the two a break and take her for the night, but she returned a mere three hours later with the inconsolable infant who immediately quieted when she was settled on the blankets between them.

It took nearly a month, but feeling ‘The Baby’ wasn’t appropriate anymore, they finally gave her a name. There was a finality in that, but they didn't discuss keeping her, or raising her, rather, she simply stuck.

They don’t know why she chose them. Perhaps because they were her saviors, maybe she only preferred them to everyone else, or possibly because she matches Levi in looks and Eren in personality. But if anyone were to ask her now, she would beam and tell them she did because her fathers are the best in the world. They don’t question it, only adore her, joyful that the war left them with something else beautiful besides their relationship.

So it only makes sense that she would accompany them here. The two became three, and although sometimes raising her gets in the way of things they would like to do, neither Eren nor Levi regret keeping and loving her.

Like now; at the moment Levi would prefer to drink his tea, but his attention has been requested elsewhere. And with all the enthusiasm of a two-year-old, Lucia is tugging at Levi’s pant leg, knowing that Eren is all ready to leave and pestering him to finish his tea because she wants to see the ocean and look for shells and feel the waves wash onto her tiny feet. It’s a waste of a good drink, but he places the half-finished cup on the table, scoops her up, and calls to Eren so they can depart.

When they arrived at this Inn last evening, it was too late to take Lucia to the beach. She’s been hounding them to go since she awoke this morning, and Levi knows making her wait longer will eventually result in a tantrum. In fact, he’s already expecting one as the three make their way outside through the sand, closer to where the waves meet the shore. Eren’s already excited to feel the water and sand on his skin again, but Levi isn’t. It’s dirty and salty, and not something he wants on his feet, and he’s sure Lucia is going to have a fit over his refusal to join them.

“Put me down, put me down,” she tells Levi when she sees Eren stop near the water, sit down and begin to remove his shoes.

He does as she requests and smiles as he watches her trot over to Eren, sit next to him, then extend her leg toward his hands so he can remove her sandal. Levi began smiling more after the war and does even more now that Hanji has found a way to extend Eren’s lifespan to normal. When they planned this trip, right after war’s end, they believed it would be their last chance, Eren’s final opportunity to lay eyes on this again. Something sentimental to do in his last days before he passed on.

His body had begun to show effects from the Titan serum, and Levi was wrought with despair thinking he would have to say farewell soon, but hope had come in the form of a treatment Hanji had discovered a year earlier. It was experimental, possibly dangerous, but technology and intelligence they had stolen from the defeated Marleyans culminated in the creation of a therapy of sorts.

It isn’t perfect by any means, makes Eren terribly, sometimes violently ill for a day or so when he injects himself with it each week, but after several months he is beginning to show steady improvement. It isn’t the best regarding something to use for the duration of his life, but Hanji is confident in the coming year they will have found a cure, something permanent. If not, they still have this, and Levi will care for Eren every week when he needs it for the rest of his days.

It’s more than Levi dared hope for years ago, at the time when their relationship had begun, or that night on the hill when Eren was convinced they were going to die. He hadn’t said it then, but his fears had been as all-consuming as Eren’s. Levi thought at best, there was less than a decade left with him, and it was breaking him inside, broke him more as the years went on. Every time Eren shifted he wanted to tell him not to, confident each transformation destroyed him little by little. And that evening they decided on a name for Lucia, he remembers musing distraught that she would be Eren’s legacy, a child he would be left to raise alone. But the fates hadn’t been as cruel as he expected, and after they had taken so much from them, they gifted them with more than he ever would have imagined. And he’s grateful.

That gratefulness is why as he watches Lucia run after Eren on the wet sand, playing, squealing, both of them smiling so big, that he sits down and begins to remove his boots. He sees Eren glance in his direction; green eyes going wide, a grin spreading across his face.

“I think Papa is going to get his feet wet,” Eren tells Lucia, and he sounds as excited as her.

She giggles then dashes over to Levi and skips in a circle around him, impatient as he loosens his laces.

“Go faster,” she pleads.

“Be patient, Little One.” A pointless suggestion, Levi realizes when he notices Eren is nearly as eager, striding over the sand, and crouching down to help Levi with his other foot.

“Oi, I’ve waited years for you do to this,” Eren whines when Levi gives him a look as he pulls his sock free.

“Consider yourself lucky, Brat.” Levi stands, takes Eren’s hand, smiles again when Lucia runs ahead of them to pick up a shell. When he reaches the wet sand, his toes scrunch at the feeling, but he looks down, notices Eren digging his toes in and does the same thing.

It doesn’t feel so bad, not disgusting like he thought it would.

“If you wait a few seconds, a wave will touch them.” Eren squeezes Levi’s hand tighter like he always did when they had to part before battle.

When it comes, it’s cool, shocking the first time, but Levi begins to enjoy it. The crash of the water across the tops of his feet, then stroking back over them as it washes away; it reminds him of Eren’s hands when they run across his skin. Not as perfect as Eren’s hands, but something close.

He winds his arm around Eren’s waist, watches Lucia play with the sand, and looks across to the horizon, thankful. They can’t embrace the way he’d like because they need to keep an eye on their child, but in a way that makes it better. There’s all the warmth of their little family, and Levi feels it more now as Eren’s arm comes around him, glues himself to his side and leans their heads against each other.

This isn’t the end, if anything, it’s another beginning, and the fear that saying the words Eren always wanted to hear would jinx them melts away for the first time in their years together. He’s never spoken them, first afraid Eren would die in battle, then afraid that titan life span would take him, but it’s different now. Somehow, he _knows_. He knows Eren isn’t going anywhere, and he doesn’t need to live in fear of those words any longer.

Lucia is a couple feet away from them, engrossed in creating a mound of sand, and Levi takes that short moment to face Eren. There’s recognition in Eren eyes when they flick down, but he’s quiet as time stands still and Levi closes his eyes, presses one soft kiss to the his before he pulls away.

“I love you, Eren.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, holy shit, I wrote something Rated T! Though, I think it's a nice little ending for this prompt series. He finally said the thing. You had to know he'd say the thing.
> 
> I hope you liked it, and thank you for reading. <3 <3 <3


End file.
